A blog about AutoCAD and AutoCAD Civil 3D for civil engineering professionals.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Multiple Surface Dilemma (Part 3)

NOTE: This is Part 3 of the Multiple Surfaces Dilemma Series. You can view Part 1 of the series here. In Part 1 of this series, a surface named ComboSurface was created. Make sure
you create that surface in your drawing before proceeding with these
steps.

Wouldn't it be nice to have a visual representation of the target minimum
depth in the profile view while you're designing your pipe network? Here's a way to make that happen:

Create a new surface in your current drawing and name it "MinimumDepth". You can use the same procedure as described for creating the "ComboSurface" in the original post of this series. Just as with the ComboSurface, this surface will not need to be displayed so set the surface style to "_No Display" as it's created.

To add some substance to the new surface, you'll need to paste the ComboSurface into the MinimumDepth surface. Again, use the same procedure described in the original post of this series except you'll be pasting a different surface.

Under the MinimumDepth surface definition, locate the Edits option, right click, and select "Raise/Lower Surface".

When prompted at the command line, enter -4 to lower the MinimumDepth surface 4 feet.

The last thing to do is create a profile based on the MinimumDepth surface:

On the home ribbon tab, locate the "Create Design" Panel, left click on Profiles, then choose "Create Surface Profile" from the drop down list.

In the Create Profile from Surface dialog box, select the alignment, select the MinimumDepth surface, then left click on Add.

Change the style of the newly created profile to a style called "Minimum Depth". This style places the profile linework on a layer that doesn't plot and has a forced color and linestyle to look different from all other profiles.

2 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Thanks for this "Part 3" tip!!! I've always duplicated a profile, changed to static and then raised/lowered as needed. I see many benefits to this method, mainly being dynamic if either the surface or alignment changes.